Grounded
by Quintessential Queen of Hearts
Summary: Tag to the end of Hit and Run. The writing of that letter.


I do not own NCIS; no infringement is intended.

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It was time to go home and hopefully leave behind this horribly messed up week. Except she can't go home and she can't stay in her lab. If she went to her personal spaces, she would find ways to occupy her time and put off what she needed to do.

Abby had thrown her coat and scarf across McGee's chair and proceeded to find a pen and paper. She had to make this right somehow. There had to be something she could do to show him how sorry she was. How much she wished she was better. For all of them, for him.

She had never been enough. McGee understood writing and she would never be able to say the words. Whatever they were. Hopefully, if she could get her thoughts out she could make some sort of sense of them.

Staying in the bullpen was her best bet to actually finish her task. She has chosen the floor thinking maybe it would provide some grounding that she desperately needs. Probably not though.

Maybe she should start going to yoga again… Not the point… So she's on the floor staring at the blank paper that is dead set on mocking her. Seriously, how does McGee do this? Maybe if she had a typewriter…

Initially, she had considered taking over McGee's desk and being done with it. Instead she's stuck with the ground. If she sits in his desk, she is self-aware enough to realize that she will inevitably mess with his chair. She will leave it too high or too low and McGee will spend five whole minutes in the morning attempting to undo whatever she had done. Then she'd hear about it for three days. Besides, she had already rifled through his desk to find the pen and paper.

It would make him mad. Well, not mad, McGee never got mad at her, but she knew it annoyed him. And she was trying really hard to not annoy him right now. Somehow this had all conglomerated in her head and rather than tempt herself with chair levers, she wasn't going to sit in it period. It could hold her things. That way it was still useful. Unlike the other team chairs which weren't being useful in the least.

Email was too impersonal, handwritten would be better. She owed it to him. She had hurt him. He was only trying to help her. She was always hurting him. Abby knew the truth. No matter how upset McGee was, he would never walk away from her in a million years. And she'd done just that, left him calling her name and kept walking. Because that's what Abby does. Abby always keeps walking.

It would never even occur to him to keep going if she were calling for him to stop. Reason number 782 why he's better than her when it boils down to it. Yes, she would do anything for anyone if she could. But when he's looking at her that way and she's trying her hardest not to cry, and he knows how crying makes her feel, she can't do it.

Abby can not stand there in front of him and let him tell her everything will be okay, that he will fix whatever is wrong, that all she has to do is tell him how to fix whatever is wrong, because she just doesn't deserve it.

She has a handful of sentences which say nothing. She can't give him this. But she can't brush him off like she has in the past. Too much has changed. She's adopted. She has another brother.

A madman tried to blow them all up. She almost died. Gibbs saved her. McGee has a scar on his stomach from glass he didn't even feel. Kate died. Jenny died. Mike died. Gibbs left. Gibbs came back.

Random cases are making her think of things that happened decades ago. Everybody dies. Everything goes away eventually. She can't fix anything. She is never going to be enough.

Nothing is ever going to stay. You can hold on however tightly you can but eventually everything, everyone leaves. And nothing she has ever done, has stopped anyone from leaving her.

The third time she reads her letter out loud it sounds even more pathetic than it did the first two times. She's almost given up. It's late and this is going nowhere and it is borderline time to choose between driving home or going back to her lab and crashing on her futon. Then Gibbs is there. He doesn't question her choice of seating and joins her.

Just like in the elevator, when she was too scared to move. She needed him then just like the first day she ever met him. She needed somebody and for some reason she could tell his was missing something too. Gibbs had saved her from being alone.

She had been lost and then she was found. Simple. A flip of a switch and she had someone she could turn to. Abby could never repay him for that. But he had still left her with only a phone number, an "I'm serious, emergencies only Abby", phone number. He'd left. That dark mark was still there, Gibbs was always willing to leave. But he came back. And that had to count for something.

Tonight he's given her back her fortune. He's trying to make her feel better and it semi works, because he's Gibbs. And he has known her a very long time. He's guessed many things about her without her having to tell him.

She hasn't thought about that cookie in years. Maybe tomorrow they can order Chinese food. Tomorrow, after she gives McGee is letter. Gibbs doesn't need one anymore. He probably never needed one to begin with.

But that's Gibbs. And McGee is different. He needs to hear things. In this case see things. It's how he is wired. She can't say everything that she knows he wants to hear but she can manage a letter.

Systematically she pulls off the ruined page and tears it into little pieces from bottom to top. Once she reaches the top, only the salutation is left unmarred. "Dear McGee." She stares at her own writing, letting her next conclusion sink in, another example of how she's been wrong. Quite a litany.

McGee is her friend. McGee is for work, for Tony and Ziva, for lunches and evidence. McGee is not who came to find her. McGee is not who tracked her down because he knew she was upset. She glances over at the clock. Futon it is. But it's okay, because Abby now knows how to salvage this letter task of hers.

There is still hope that she can escape the prison of her own mind and tell him how she messed up and that she is sorry. Start at the beginning. Fix things from the beginning and the rest will fall into place.

Dear Tim.


End file.
